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Tuesday, April 22, 2014

The Princess of Sparta: Heroes of the Trojan War by Aria Cunningham

The Princess of Sparta tackles a unique setting, one that I have not seen used much in the romance genre. This made for a very refreshing historical romance that pulls readers from the typical Victorian England setting to the world of Greek mythology.

Helen of Sparta, at age 16, finds herself being presented to potential suitors. She's not thrilled with the way these men fight over her. Menelaus, king of Mycenae, is chosen to become her husband, and he turns out to be abusive and really have little need of her. Helen of Sparta remains hopeful that the prophecy made about her having a true love and important purpose will come to life someday.

That "someday" occurs when the prince of Troy (Paris) arrives in Mycenea. He and Helen cannot deny their passion for one another and the mutual admiration that is meant to be. Now it's up to fate to see if their love can survive the Trojan War.

Generally, I loved the characters and definitely the setting. Still, I ended up being jarred from the story. I received an ePub version, so this may not be a final copy, though I see nothing stating it is an unedited version. Hopefully, if it wasn't, grammatical errors were corrected before the final edition was issued. "Loosing" instead of "losing" or one sentence where "frescos of Grecian women carried urns..." First, the plural form of fresco has an -es. Second, I highly doubt the frescoes were carrying urns. Each time I encountered an error, I got pulled from the story, and soon enough, I was tired of having the editor alerts in my mind going off.

I do think there is merit in The Princess of Sparta, but with a list price of almost $13, I hope that the book has had a solid final round of editing before it was printed.

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